Retail liquor lobby stifles competition again

We hear so much about the power of the gun lobby, but in Colorado the gun lobby seems to have a lot less influence these days than the liquor store lobby.

While gun-control legislation made significant progress this week in the legislature, for example, a bill to expand full-strength beer sales in Colorado died without even being put to a vote.

The sponsor, Rep. Kevin Priola, R-Henderson, knew he didn’t have the votes to pass House Bill 1178 out of the Business, Labor, Economic and Workforce Development Committee, according to the Denver Business Journal, and didn’t want to waste everyone’s time with pointless testimony.

Priola’s bill would have permitted grocery and convenience stores, which can only sell 3.2 beer now, to sell “craft beer” – defined as brewers producing no more than 6 million barrels of beer per year. And it would have permitted retail liquor stores to have as many five full liquor licenses instead of just one.

No dice. This entirely reasonable and modest idea never had a chance once the liquor store lobby rallied the troops.

The opposition stoked the familiar anti-competitive fears, arguing that supermarkets might drive a few liquor stores out of business. No doubt that’s possible. On the other hand, good liquor stores presumably drive bad ones out of business. So what? I thought we celebrated competition in America.

More curiously, craft brewers argue that the present system has allowed them to flourish and that it would be hard to place their products in national chain grocery stores. Really? You’d never know it strolling through the aisles of at King Soopers only liquor store on Leetsdale Drive.

Vincent Carroll is The Denver Post's editorial page editor. He has been writing commentary on politics and public policy in Colorado since 1982 and was originally with the Rocky Mountain News, where he was also editor of the editorial pages until that newspaper gave up the ghost in 2009.

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